Extract from the text by Paul Salopek: "Paley was voluble and earthy, a French Zorba. He was joining me for a rare foot crossing of Afghanistan’s Wakhan corridor, a forgotten redoubt tucked high behind the mountain walls of the Hindu Kush. In the mornings he performed yoga on the road to soothe a tricky back. Expanded font settings on my laptop were my own concessions to middle age. But I didn’t feel old. Not at all. Walking the Earth makes you a child again. By the time I eventually reach Tierra del Fuego, my destination six or seven years away, I will be newborn. I glanced back. Paley was doing a Wakhi dance now—paddling his arms and shimmying his hips along the desolate banks of the Panj. Across the glacial currents in Afghanistan, a few delighted Wakhi shepherds in dirt-brown shalwar kameezes gathered to mimic his moves. Everyone dances in Afghanistan." Full story here : https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/09/across-the-roof-of-the-world-as-a-historic-journey-proceeds/ This story is part of the Out of Eden project: Paul Salopek’s 21,000-mile odyssey is a decade-long experiment in slow journalism. Moving at the beat of his footsteps, Paul is walking the pathways of the first humans who migrated out of Africa in the Stone Age and made the Earth ours. More on Out of Eden: https://outofedenwalknonprofit.org/

"Roof of the World", from the Persian word Bam-e Dunya, is an expression that was used for the first time in history by the people of the Pamir to describe their native region. It was later borrowed to describe either the Himalayan region, Tibet or the summit of Everest. Extract from the text by Paul Salopek: "A pale disk of sun had slipped beneath a chink in the storm clouds. For perhaps two minutes everything gleamed with electrum light. Silver-gold shafts sprayed the Karakoram, igniting the tops of the snow pyramids that stretched in serried ranks to the edges of the world. It was the sort of light that burned away the loss in my heart. It was light through which I could imagine walking, with all my people, into the promise of new country." Full story here : https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/09/across-the-roof-of-the-world-as-a-historic-journey-proceeds/ This story is part of the Out of Eden project: Paul Salopek’s 21,000-mile odyssey is a decade-long experiment in slow journalism. Moving at the beat of his footsteps, Paul is walking the pathways of the first humans who migrated out of Africa in the Stone Age and made the Earth ours. More on Out of Eden: https://outofedenwalknonprofit.org/

Part 1 - Winter (3rd winter expedition) Afghanistan’s Kyrgyz nomads survive in one of the most remote, high-altitude, bewitching landscapes on Earth. It’s a heavenly life – and a living hell. A winter expedition through the Wakhan Corridor and into the Afghan Pamir mountains, to document the life of the Afghan Kyrgyz tribe, one of the remotest high altitude communities in the world. Full story here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/wakhan-corridor

Part 2 - Summer Afghanistan’s Kyrgyz nomads survive in one of the most remote, high-altitude, bewitching landscapes on Earth. It’s a heavenly life – and a living hell. Summer expedition through the Wakhan Corridor and into the Afghan Pamir mountains, to document the life of the Afghan Kyrgyz tribe, one of the remotest high altitude communities in the world. Full story here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/wakhan-corridor

My second winter expedition in Afghanistan's Pamir mountains. "For thousands of years, the Kyrgyz lived a nomadic life, wandering from Siberia and Mongolia to Kazakhstan and China into Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and eventually — about 150 years ago — into the Wakhan. The grass there was good. The Kyrgyz would spend their summers fattening up their animals and during the harsh winters would move into the lower valleys, which were then in Russia or, on the other side, China. But the Russian Revolution in 1917 cut off part of that route, and when the Chinese closed their border after the revolution in 1949, some Kyrgyz were trapped in this desolate section of Afghanistan. Cut off from their brethren on the other side of the borders, they had to adjust to the brutal winters." See Interview here : https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/a-hard-life-on-the-roof-of-the-world/

Compilations of some of my walks through the Wakhan Corridor, Afghanistan. Wakhi people are split between Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and China. They are Ismaili, their spiritual leader is the Aga Khan. Unlike the nomadic Kyrgyz living in the high elevation of the Wakhan, Wakhi people live in the valleys and are sedentary.

My first 2008 winter expedition across the Afghan Pamir mountains. Since 1972, the high altitude plateau had not been visited by photographers in winter. To reach the plateau, my friend Malang and I walked up the frozen Wakhan river. High in the Pamir mountains of Afghanistan, a remnant group of less than 1000 Kyrgyz dwell in one of the remotest and inhospitable environments occupied by any human population. Deprived of the simplest infrastructure, schools or health care institutions and faced with an ever growing problem of opium addiction,this community shows the highest level of maternal and child mortality in the world. With eight months of winter the beauty of the Afghan Pamir belies its ability to support life. Also a video here ©Matthieu Paley: https://vimeo.com/8253484

A chronological journey of our 2005 trip through the high Pamir mountains in Afghanistan, finding a path into Pakistan. That summer, Mareile and I walked over 300 kilometres with our donkey Clémentine. It was a crazy and unforgettable journey, and we had a mission… to deliver letters. The Afghan Kyrgyz community living in the Pamir mountains escaped to Pakistan in the early 1980’s, walking out of the Pamir over high passes, worried about the incoming Russian invasion. They abandoned their yurts, leaving fires burning to make believe the yurts were inhabited. They took most of their herds with them, the exodus was of biblical proportion. They waited about 3 years in Pakistan and eventually were given political asylum in Turkey where they still live. But a small number never left to go to Turkey, they returned to the Afghan Pamir. The community was split. In 2004, I met the Afghan Kyrgyz community in Turkey to give them images of their relatives that stayed behind in Afghanistan. In return, many gave me letters and cassettes with recorded speeches to give to their relatives in the Afghan Pamir. I just had to go to deliver them... In 2005, Mareile and I left to deliver those letters on foot, going from yurt camps to yurt camps, postman (and postwoman!) on the roof of the world, reuniting family members that had not heard from each others for 25 years.

When you walk too long, you watch the ground too much. Excerpt from ©Paul Salopek : "The scarce litter scattered in the Earth’s roadless spaces, as opposed to the tidal waves of waste generated in the industrialized world, generally hint at an equally rare and vanishing lifestyle: rambling animal herders, mobile people who still roam the globe the way humankind did in the Neolithic. Today the United Nations estimates that, at most, some 500 million people still survive on such ancient pastoral economies. That’s just 7 percent of the human family. And the ranks of the world’s remnant pastoralists are under increasing assault by agribusiness, climate change, and conflict. National Geographic photographer Matthieu Paley has been noticing, documenting—and collecting—discarded nomad artifacts in the wilds of Central and South Asia for many years. During a recent assignment in the austere Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges that cleave the frontiers of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan in the Wakhan Corridor, he frequently lowered his camera from panoramas of 20,000-foot peaks to refocus on what was lying right at his boot tips: a humble strip of polyester ripped from nomad girl’s sweater, a twist of worn rope, or a tuft of yak wool snagged from a passing caravan on the thorns of a wild rose bush." Story here: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/out-of-eden-walk/articles/2017-12-ground-canvas/